1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to stabilizing polypeptides. In particular, the invention pertains to preventing or inhibiting degradation of a polypeptide, such as an antibody, where such degradation results from exposure of the polypeptide to urea.
2. Description of Related Art
The large-scale, economic purification of proteins is increasingly an important problem for the biotechnology industry. Generally, proteins are produced by cell culture, using either mammalian or bacterial cell lines engineered to produce the protein of interest by insertion of a recombinant plasmid containing the gene for that protein. Since the cell lines used are living organisms, they must be fed with a complex growth medium, containing sugars, amino acids, and growth factors, usually supplied from preparations of animal serum. Separation of the desired protein from the mixture of compounds fed to the cells and from the by-products of the cells themselves to a purity sufficient for use as a human therapeutic poses a formidable challenge.
Procedures for purification of proteins from cell debris initially depend on the site of expression of the protein. Some proteins can be caused to be secreted directly from the cell into the surrounding growth media; others are made intracellularly. For the latter proteins, the first step of a purification process involves lysis of the cell, which can be done by a variety of methods, including mechanical shear, osmotic shock, or enzymatic treatments. Such disruption releases the entire contents of the cell into the homogenate, and in addition produces subcellular fragments that are difficult to remove due to their small size. These are generally removed by differential centrifugation or by filtration. The same problem arises, although on a smaller scale, with directly secreted proteins due to the natural death of cells and release of intracellular host cell proteins in the course of the protein production run.
Once a clarified solution containing the protein of interest has been obtained, its separation from the other proteins produced by the cell is usually attempted using a combination of different chromatography techniques. These techniques separate mixtures of proteins on the basis of their charge, degree of hydrophobicity, or size. Several different chromatography resins are available for each of these techniques, allowing accurate tailoring of the purification scheme to the particular protein involved. The essence of each of these separation methods is that proteins can be caused either to move at different rates down a long column, achieving a physical separation that increases as they pass further down the column, or to adhere selectively to the separation medium, being then differentially eluted by different solvents. In some cases, the desired protein is separated from impurities when the impurities specifically adhere to the column, and the protein of interest does not, that is, the protein of interest is present in the “flow-through”.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,127,526 (Blank, G.) describes purifying proteins, such as anti-HER2 antibodies, by Protein A chromatography. WO99/57134 (Basey et al.) describes ion exchange chromatography for purifying polypeptides. The method is particularly useful for removing contaminating acidic antibody variants from the desired antibody product. U.S. Pat. No. 4,605,513 (Di Marchi, R.) refers to a process for inhibiting carbamylation of peptides using 1,2-ethylene diamine or 1,2-ethylene diamine-like materials.